Establishing fundamentals for conservation actions

Acoustic early warning system

The decline of habitat for elephants due to expanding human activity is a serious conservation problem. This has continuously escalated the human–elephant conflict in Africa and Asia. Elephants make extensive use of powerful infrasonic calls (rumbles) that travel distances of up to several kilometers. This makes elephants well-suited for acoustic monitoring because it enables detecting elephants even if they are out of sight. Such a system could be used as an early warning alert system for humans living in human-elephant conflict (HEC) areas​

We teamed-up and joined forces with Sensing Clues, a group of engineers, and other renowned researchers working acoustically with all three elephant species, to advance a sound alert system and to ultimately build a prototype. You can find a brief introduction of this joint-project here.